02 February

Jerez test report – day two

Programme
Today was another day of limited running for the team. Despite a concerted effort overnight to rectify the issues that had limited progress yesterday, our first run this morning once again brought a problem to the surface.

The engineers duly attempted to fix matters throughout the morning, carrying out a number of installation runs, but were not able to arrive at a definitive cure. Before the lunch break, therefore, they elected to investigate the situation even more deeply, thereby uncovering a small ancillary issue that they believed to be the root cause of the trouble.

The fix took most of the afternoon to effect, resulting in Jenson’s running just a single additional lap at the end of the day, which we believe indeed proved to have cured the issue.

We are therefore hopeful of beginning afresh tomorrow, without a recurrence of the issue.

Jenson Button

“We expected this test to be tricky - and the next two days probably won’t be plain sailing, either. But people have short memories . Look at last winter - the first test of 2014 was very tough for everyone too.

“So there are no real worries at the moment. We’re just hopeful we’ve solved our issue – the last run of the day seems to have sorted the problem out, so I hope tomorrow will be a little easier. It’d be nice to get some laps on the engine, and to begin to find out where we are in terms of engine driveability and car development.

“This is a very complicated power unit, but its packaging is unbelievable - very tight - and we haven’t had any temperature issues. That’s a massive positive for us, so well done to Honda for that.

“There’s a very positive atmosphere about the place: the team isn’t McLaren and Honda, it’s McLaren-Honda. It’s everyone together.”